Palestinian police close station after Israel says it interferes with military, airport communications

Palestinian police closed a radio station in the West Bank after Israel charged the broadcasts interfered with Israeli military and airport communications, a Palestinian security source said on Friday.

Majdi al-Arabid, owner of the al-Hariya station, said Palestinian forces had arrested him and kept him in custody for a day when he refused their orders to shut the station, then freed him on bail on Friday.

The station`s broadcasts are pro-Fatah, the secular Palestinian movement headed by President Mahmoud Abbas. Once based in the coastal Gaza Strip, al-Arabid moved the station to the West Bank when Hamas Islamists seized Gaza in 2007.

ca

Palestinian police have in the past few months increasingly taken up security duties in the West Bank.

Israel has insisted on better Palestinian security control as a condition for resuming peace talks stalled since last December